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I Never Thought I’d Make It To 30

During my time as a 20 something, I had a profound sense that I would never make it to 30 years old. It was weird; almost like my ability to see my future past that point just stopped. It was a somewhat unnerving, yet serene experience – one I faced with a surreal kind of acceptance of fate. I have told very few people about this, but now I am telling you.

You see, due to my lack of ability to see any future past the age of 30, I just came to terms with the thought that something would happen to me between now and then which I couldn’t foresee, but that would change my life immeasurably – naturally, I just figured that would be death, and the end of my time here amongst the living.

That might seem seriously morbid and unnecessarily extreme to the reader, but it’s how I felt, right or wrong. It was a weird feeling, and not really a though that scared me, which I found particularly interesting.

Well, I am now 30 years old, and racing at full speed through my 31st year on planet Earth on a collision course with my 32nd – and life has never been better. I’m more alive today than I have ever been, and I have one thing to thank for it – my future vision, my mission, my legacy. I am no longer limited in what I see for my future – in fact, I now see a legacy that stretches until the end of time itself. That’s not ego or greed, it’s a vision for the World and the part I play in it that is bigger than me and my life, and that will live long beyond the point at which my body decays and rots back into the ground from which I was born.

Through my early years, and especially my teens and my 20’s, I was extremely naive and thoroughly ignorant. I stopped learning when I left school, and when I decided to drop out of college to work full time at Pizza Hut so I could focus on my career as a musician (or as I affectionately referred to it at the time, a ‘rock star’) I seemed to leave my curiosity for the World at the college gates.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and to be quite frank, I didn’t care. I didn’t think it was important, and I didn’t think it applied to me. I thought I knew what I needed to know, and so I fumbled through life for years, blinding hitting wall after wall of dissatisfaction and despair.

In my 20’s, I hated my job, and spent my days daydreaming about when I would become a ‘rock star’ and everything would be okay. Fulfilment was a pipe-dream, and satisfaction seemed to live on another planet, whilst I wallowed in the mud of disillusionment, accepting little to no responsibility for my lot in life, or the path I had chosen to walk.

Then, at 25, I started to wake up.

I have since come to realise that the reason I could see no future past 30 was partly that 30 was a subconsciously important landmark in my life (mainly as a result of extensive social conditioning around the importance of that milestone), and because I had no vision for my future.

You future visions is everything – it’s what makes you hungry, and that fuels the fire in your belly to get out there and smash through your goals. It’s what makes life worth living, and what drives us forward against all odds, and immense adversity. My future vision today would drive me through hell and back, and in a lot of ways it already has, testing my determination and resolve almost to breaking point on many occasions.

Still, my determination is unwavering, and my vision propels me forward, leaving a legacy in it’s wake that my children and generations to come can be proud to model.

Calcifying my vision, my reason for living – my ‘why” – was one of the single most important aspects of deep personal introspection I have undertaken. It sparked a flame at the end of what was an extremely dark tunnel, and lit the way to fulfilment of my desires and passions, and that showed me how I could take that passion, amplify it, and share it with the World in ways that cause tidal waves of positive change across the face of the planet.

My vision keeps me going when there’s nothing else left.

So here’s my message to you; find yourself. Calcify your vision, and set about delivering your legacy to the World. Know who you are, and how you can add value to the World around you – EVERYONE has value to add, and everyone has a message to share that can positively affect the hearts and minds of people the World over.

What’s your message? What’s your vision? What will your legacy look like and how will it impact the World when your meat cart has rotted and returned to the roots of the Earth?

Know this; the value you have is everything inside of you. Know yourself, and then take that knowledge of self out to the World to share the intrinsic value of compounded experience you hold within. Everything you need is inside yourself, and everything the World needs is inside each and every one of us.

I spent my life climbing the mountain with my eyes closed, my ears deaf and my mind numb, but when I started to wake up at 25, I removed my limitations one by one, and started to give myself to the World wholly and completely. This 5 year turning point period in my life marked the final road to the top of that mountain – to the peaks of clarity, providing a 360 degree vision I had never before experienced. Stood here on the peak I can see for miles in every direction, and it’s so clear to me now. I have the foresight to see each and every path available to me, along with the challenges and achievements that come with each path.

But it’s not time to descend the mountain; oh no. There is no going down from here, like most people will joke about turning 30 years old. I’ve spent my life climbing the mountain, and now it’s my time to spread my wings, take my leap of faith, and soar.

Today is the first day of your life, and you are a gift – whoever you are, wherever you are, please don’t waste it.